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Worldbuilding is hard

AnonusAnonus
in Artistic Pursuits
My fanfuctions? I can worldbuild that shit just fine. But new characters made from scratch? Their world takes ages to develop. And I stumble on internal inconsistencies, unsubtleties, and perhaps straight-up garbage!
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  • ToolsieToolsie
    ಠ_ಠ
    It takes time, yes, but when you see the world that you created in the flesh, you get a sense of pride.

    Just have patience and work out a way to iron out those inconsistencies.
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    Alright...
  • ToolsieToolsie
    ಠ_ಠ
    It took me eight months to build up the world for my novel. It seems like a long time, and it was, but during those eight months I got the time to really get to know my world, how it works, what rules and regulations there are, what each place in the world is like, things like that. And once I started writing, I didn't need to worry about the world building because it had already been done.

    Take some time out to really focus on the world itself. Get some solid foundation going before working on your characters and story. You wouldn't build a house without building the basic framework, so it doesn't make sense to write a story without working out how the world in your story works.

    It's hard, but worth it.
  • ToolsieToolsie
    ಠ_ಠ
    Whenever someone says "I spent X years on this story", a good portion of that time was spent world building, particularly in novels that are first in a series of such.
  • HexartesHexartes
    I would recommend the opposite approach; years of developing my fictional world have done very nearly jack shit compared to writing stories set in it. I find slapdash, after the fact worldbuilding, when properly committed to, is the most engaging to really dig into.
  • MadassAlexMadassAlex
    edited 2016-03-13 14:24:57
    From the time George Lucas started pre-production on the first Star Wars film to the end of Return of the Jedi, everything from the setting to the characters to the plot changed -- sometimes drastically. I mention this because the original Star Wars trilogy spent its entire production cycle reinventing itself to be a better series of films. Often, this was due to external voices and influences moving Lucas away from his original ideas, because Lucas was not an expert on everything. Star Wars is so fondly remembered now, in part, because of the way George Lucas compromised his initial concepts in order to make the story fit the medium of film more effectively, and thereby communicated more effectively with the audience. 

    The audience really is key, and how your audience interprets your work may be very different compared to your intentions. I'd therefore argue that the worldbuilding is usually far from the most important element of crafting a story, as fun as it might be. Audiences, as a rule of thumb, respond most intensely to sympathetic characters and resonant themes -- especially when those factors converge. Leaning on Eastern philosophy, Star Wars invokes the conflict between emotional desire and patient contemplation while under duress, and several pivotal moments bring the conflict front and centre. The most emotionally charged examples are Luke's duels with Vader; in the first, he engages with Vader as part of his emotional compulsion to save his comrades, whereas his second duel is a result of his deliberated capture. We get very clear examples of how Luke grows through juxtaposing his relationship with one of Star Wars central thematic conflicts, and the very title "Return of the Jedi" refers to Luke's compassionate and disciplined victory over emotional impulse. 

    When we ask questions such as, "What is the story about?" or, "Why does this story exist?", we're essentially questioning the work's thematic core. Batman, for instance, is partially about the dissonance between law and morality; Bruce Wayne has to clean the streets of Gotham as the law and law enforcement aren't capable of filling the city's moral void. Many crime-related stories, be they from the perspective of law enforcement, perpetrator, or victim, use the same essential theme as a way to anchor the rest of the story. In The Lord of the Rings, there is a consistent theme of choosing cooperation despite existing animosity, which is juxtaposed heavily against what we learn of Orcs and their cultures. And so on. Themes are the foundation of the points of contention and discussion within the story, although the author(s) often make their positions on these matters clear. 

    All of this is why I think it makes more sense to begin with themes and characters than it does to begin with a consistent setting. Audiences will forgive the errors of logic that result in setting inconsistencies, but they'll feel thematic inconsistency (or a lack of sticking points at all) in their gut. It's themes that cause some elements of stories to make "gut sense" in the moment, even when those elements become questionable on closer appraisal. This is why the legend of the forty-seven ronin "feels" good despite its plausibility being open to question; it's a story that gives us characters who adhere to the code of the samurai, despite becoming castaway ronin, and therefore social outsiders in a society they used to be peers of.  

    What might be most effective to ask yourself now is what the point of contention in your story is. What conflict is it that requires discussion, and how are you going to discuss that conflict through narrative means? Who are your central characters, and what is their relationship with this conflict? Why are they so crucial to this conflict, or so attached to it? Then your worldbuilding is more easily started in earnest, as you have the opportunity to build a world with themes and conflicts in mind. This might sound like a limitation, but it can work remarkably well. In the Warhammer Fantasy setting, for instance, the forces of Chaos are the distressed reflections of sentient beings, existing in a kind of twisted symbiosis with the setting's settled societies. Without sentient beings to generate emotion, Chaos cannot exist, so it needs the civilisations it is eternally trying to crush. By the same token, those civilisations cannot help but empower Chaos, even as they fight its emissaries. Chaos cannot be destroyed unless, in a typically English postmodern twist, the minds that empower it collectively also cease to exist.

    Themes, conflicts, characters, in no particular order, are the true drivers of any story. If you can satisfy yourself on those grounds, then I guarantee you that some of the most difficult work is already done, as you'll have the kind of framework for a story that worldbuilding alone simply can't provide.   
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    I don't know how to address most of that, but I have started with themes and characters.
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